Caliban - Opinion and Righteous Anger

Monday was a big day for the McKenna-Macdonalds. Eloïse attended peuterspeelzaal, or play school.

As it was her first day, we both stayed with her for the whole session.

As we entered at 13:30, she began to cautiously look around. Wanda, the peuterleidster, encouraged her to come into the sand pit, which she did. It wasn't long before she was building sandcastles, which signalled the start of an afternoon packed with stimulating activities.

There was playing with water, time to play with toys, gluing paper leaves onto a paper tree, story time with Wanda, walking in a circle and singing nursery rhymes.

Of course, there's also biscuit time, when all of the children sit at a table and it's the turn of one of them to bring a tin of biscuits around to all the others. They wash their biscuit down with a cup of squash.

At the end of the day, a tray is brought upstairs by the assisting parent (all parents are expected to help out for an afternoon from time to time) containing all of the peeled fruit that the children brought that day. The toddlers sit in a circle and the tray is passed around until all of the fruit has been eaten. It's a delightful sight.

The first day was thus a big success. She not only held her own in a new environment, but seemed to throughly enjoy almost all of the activities. Only walking in a circle, whilst holding hands and singing nursery rhymes was something she didn't want to do.

On Tuesday, I left after the first half an hour and Sarah left after a further fifteen minutes. I went back two hours later to see how she was doing and was pleasantly surprised to find her busily painting a paper hedgehog. She was having a whale of a time and missed story time in order to paint a second hedgehog.

At 17:00, it was all I could do to get her to leave. We spent a further twenty minutes playing in the garden of the peuterspeelzaal.

Today, Eloïse had her first typical day at the peuterspeelzaal. Sarah took her at 13:00 and left with the other parents at 14:00. She didn't return until 17:00. When she arrived, Eloïse was perfectly happy and had not been asking for either of us.

When she got home, she showed me the paper squirrel she had been playing with.

It's still early days, but any fears we might have had that the transition from her parents' side to peuterspeelzaal might be a difficult one have more or less been allayed. Our daughter has a secure family background and that clearly allows her to take strides into new and unfamiliar situations with the confidence that we're there to protect and encourage her, if needed.

Our little girl is blossoming into a confident and intrepid little person. We're filled with pride.

Another thing that's been occupying our thoughts of late is the fact that Sarah is pregnant again; thirteen weeks gone, to be precise.

To answer the question we get asked the most often: no, we don't know what sex the baby is. It's too early to tell and -- as was the case with Eloïse , we don't wish to find out before the birth.

Eloïse had the working title of Franbert, but this baby doesn't have a code name at the moment. Maybe one will emerge later.

Eloïse is pretty excited at the prospect of being someone's big sister. She regularly kisses Mama's belly and talks about the baby.

Our two ultrasounds to date show the baby to be in good health, breakdancing in its amniotic fluid and with a nice heartbeat and all limbs growing as expected.

We haven't been keeping this a secret. I think we made the first pregnancy known after just a few weeks. No, this time, we've just been so busy with preparing for the move, actually executing the move, getting stuff done in the new house and dealing with Eloïse , that there's scarcely been a moment to blog about it and let the cat out of the bag.

We have a lovely midwife arranged to perform the birth at home and are looking forward to welcoming our next little hellraiser into the household. Eloïse just doesn't keep us busy enough, so we needed to add another one to the mix. That's a joke, if you were wondering.

As with Eloïse , discussions of suitable names began way before the pregnancy. It only takes nine months to fully bake a new human-being, but it takes considerably longer to name one.

It's the end of Eloïse 's first week at peuterspeelzaal and what a successful one it has been.

Today, it was a special afternoon out, with her whole group being driven down to the Amsterdamse Bos for an autumn walk through the woods. We found toadstools and frogs (or maybe they were toads, but they weren't sitting on their stools), plus lots of fallen tree trunks to clamber over.

At the end of our walk, the children had snacks at Boerderij Meerzicht and then spent the remainder of the afternoon playing in the playground outside.

As I wrote yesterday, Eloïse loves her new play school. I must say, I'm pretty enamoured with it, too. The children are a sweet bunch and the parents are very nice, too. I've really liked everyone I've met and I wouldn't be surprised if the place serves to enhance my social life. After all, one sees these people every day at pick-up and drop-off time.

Most importantly, though, Eloïse 's happy. She already treats Wanda as one of her family -- as do the other children -- and she seems so at ease in the environment that it's amazing to think that the past week was her first one. Even Wanda was surprised how easily it went and remarked that Eloïse seems very solid. I like to think that's partially down to us, her parents.

We've been very busy with the house over the last few weeks. It's hard to imagine that only one calendar month has passed since we moved in, but that's the reality of the situation.

Dozens of boxes have been unpacked, their contents generally neatly filed away.

Our antique bookcase has been delivered and placed in the living-room. Its shelves are already ablaze with the warm sight of aging books, each one occupying a slot not just on its respective shelf, but also an unique position in the tale of our lives.

Many purchases of small items for the bathroom have been made, amongst which a Vipp pedal bin and some towels, a Samuel Heath toothbrush holder, some soap dishes and a few more odds and ends.

Boiler and air-conditioning maintenance was carried out last week. A few new filters still need to be ordered and fitted, since the previous owner apparently did no maintenance whatsoever. The underfloor heating on the second floor is also out of commission while the LCD control panel is repaired.

The garden has had its first bout of maintenance. A surprising amount of work was required, but, luckily for me, it was carried out by someone else. It's looking a lot better now.

The house's alarm system was malfunctioning, but has since been fixed by replacing one of the movement sensors.

Similarly, the outside lighting was tripping one of the earth switches after heavy rainfall. Annoyingly, this was taking out the office and washing room electricity. The suspected culprit lamp has been found and taken out of commission, so hopefully that will be an end to it.

The NEC telephone exchange has caused its fair share of headaches, but seems to be properly configured now. I had purchased some nice Siemens ISDN phones, but the exchange's internal ISDN S0 bus wasn't working, so we hadn't been able to use them until a couple of days ago. Not only was the S0 bus not configured, but a couple of wires had also been incorrectly connected, so it was never going to work until that had been fixed.

I bought a fax machine the other day, because, since getting back to Amsterdam, I've found that there are a few occasions per year that I need to send a fax. The fax facility on my mobile phone doesn't really cut it, and a simple fax machine doesn't cost much, so it seemed worth shelling out on one. Now that we're back on ISDN for the first time in ten years, we have four MSNs (telephone numbers, that is), so we can allocate a separate number for the fax.

My old American Klipsch computer speakers bit the dust when I forgot they needed to be plugged into a transformer. I accidentally plugged them straight into the 220V mains here and breathed a sad sigh as I heard the subwoofer make a feeble popping sound as its soul parted from its body.

I went to BCC and replaced them with a set of surprisingly good-sounding Bose Companion 3 speakers. These have dual inputs, so the Sonos in the office is also directly connected to them. That saves having to run the Sonos through the line-in of the computer's sound card, which avoids any strange ALSA mixer troubleshooting issues.

Next week, a contractor is hopefully coming to the house to perform some urgent maintenance that can't wait until after the winter. I'll be a lot happier once that has taken place.

There are numerous other little jobs here and there that need doing, but nothing terribly urgent, so we're just taking care of things as and when they occur to us. The only thing that can't wait is the repair of the garden shed's roof, which is in a pretty poor state.

I think we've achieved a great deal in our first month and we've now gained a pretty good understanding of the house and its systems.

The title of this entry is what Wanda (of peuterspeelzaal fame) sings to the children when they're changing from one activity to the next, in case you were wondering.

This entry isn't about Eloïse 's playschool, however. It's about our family trip this afternoon to De Olmenhorst in Lisserbroek.

De Olmenhorst is an organic orchard about 25km outside of Amsterdam. After parking, we grabbed a couple of carrier-bags and headed for the apple trees. Jonagold, Jonagored and Elstar are the three varieties that were literally there for the picking. We stuck to Elstar.

Eloïse had a great time, walking up and down the aisles, finding low-hanging fruit, grabbing the stem and tilting the fruit until it came free.

All of the pears had been picked the day before, so we had to select those from some crates rather than pluck them ourselves.

After loading the car with our hand-picked fruit, we went for lunch, played in the playground and then finished up with a few purchases at the organic shop.

On the way back home, Eloïse had fallen asleep in the car, so we stopped at Pisa for an ice-cream.

Dinner was -- what else? -- an apple bake: plucked by Eloïse and baked by Sarah.

The house has been in scaffolding for the last couple of days, as workmen have been repairing some of the brickwork around the perimeter of the house.

Much of this brickwork hasn't seen any repair since it was first put in place some ninety odd years ago, so I think next spring will see us performing extensive restoration work on the exterior. Some areas, however, couldn't be delayed until after the winter, so those were tackled this week. The second floor balcony, the first floor bay window and the ground floor conservatory front wall were all repaired, so we should hopefully now stay watertight during the upcoming winter.

We've been in the new house for just over a month now and, at this point, it's hard to imagine that we ever had any doubts whether buying and moving into the place would be the appropriate course of action. The three of us all love it and feel very much at home here. It's hard to imagine being anywhere else now.

I love to sit in my office, listening to the Sonos, and look out the window at the autumnal scenes of bakfietsende mothers bringing their tiny tots to playschool. Bronzed leaves, driven by the wind, cascade across the street; spiders crawl over webs spun across the window frame; people arrive for work and exchange a momentary glance with me. Perhaps they're as curious about me as I am about them.

We're still missing the touches of a lived-in home, but that will change when we get our artwork back from the framemaker's and hang it up. I'll also continue to haunt the local auction rooms in search of items that just seem to belong in our home. Too many of our walls are bare at the moment, but we need time to grow into the place.

For now, the world outside my window is a living tapestry.

Peter and Chantal have been visiting us this week. It's Peter's third stay with us; Chantal's second. For both of them, however, it's been their first time in the new house and it's been fun.

The nice thing about good friends is the comfort that one feels in their company. There's no obligation to do anything in particular. Consequently, we haven't done very much at all in the last few days. Trips to the Hästens shop and a hearty pancake down in the Bos at Boerderij Meerzicht this afternoon were notable exceptions.

On Thursday evening, Brian and Victoria came over for dinner with us, too. That was a prelude to the following day's 3rd Annual Amsterdam Lunchops Burger, a continuation of the grand tradition started way back when we were all employees of Google in Silicon Valley and would go for lunch on Fridays to Clarke's for a well-deserved burger and whinge. It all seems so long ago now.

Peter and Chantal leave us tomorrow as they head further on their travels, taking the train to Copenhagen via Duisburg, then on to Stockholm.

In a couple of weeks, Sarah's folks fly over for a rare autumnal visit. It's their 40th wedding anniversary, so we're going to take them to Iceland for a few days. We'll spend a couple of days in Reykjavík and then take in some of the Golden Circle sights. It should be a nice, easy trip.

Paul Raven died last Saturday, aged 46. He will be missed.

Peter and Chantal left a day later than planned and headed to Paris instead of Stockholm. That's the beauty of travel ad lib.

Eloïse is back at playschool after half-term and loving every minute of it. Wanda told me that Eloïse now almost exclusively speaks Dutch while she's there. It's both surprising and pleasing how fast the transition has occurred. Sarah even caught Eloïse speaking to herself in Dutch whilst playing on her own the other day, which really shows how natural it's becoming for her.

Possibly our most pressing furnishing need was answered yesterday morning when our dining-room lighting was delivered and mounted. We purchased a couple of Lumina Galileo lamps from a local shop and are very enthusiastic about the results. To my great delight, it's now possible to read the paper after 17:00 and the lamps add a sleek, classy touch to the room, especially when combined with a dimmer switch.

I had first wanted a different kind of light (a horizontal mounting bar with three adjustable hanging lamps, each of which is turned on, off and dimmed by holding and releasing the 12V wires on which it hangs), but I decided to ignore my appreciation of the engineering and make a purely aesthetically based decision. Sarah's conviction that the Italian Galileos were the better choice also played a vital role, of course.

We've also ordered a standard lamp for the living-room. It has a dark wooden base and will be crowned by a lampshade that we're having hand-made from horsehair by a local craftswoman. It sounds dodgy, but it's an obvious choice once you've seen an example of the finished product. Her lampshades and, indeed, other pieces of art made from horsehair are absolutely beautiful.

The three of us continue to feel very content in the house. The weather has become quite chilly over the last week and the house has a lovely, cosy, warm atmosphere to it. It's simply a joy to spend time here, reading a book, watching TV, eating with friends... whatever. I find myself very much at ease here and continue to be surprised and slightly perplexed at the fact that it feels so perfectly our own home. Possibly that's due to the painting we had done; possibly it's just the fact that the house is dead right for us, anyway. I don't know.

Sarah's participation in Moeders Voor Moeders ended today.

For the last ten or so weeks, Sarah has been collecting her urine in flasks and a man has been coming to the door on Fridays to pick them up. Subsequently, Moeders voor Moeders extracts the hCG (Human Chorionic Gonadotropin) hormone from the pee and then uses this to produce medicine to treat infertility. Apparently, millions of litres of pee are needed to produce just a few grammes of hCG.

Apparently, the hCG collected in this country is sent all over the world, including to Japan and the US, because very few countries have a collection programme in place.

If you're pregnant or plan to be in the future, consider donating your pee for hCG collection. After all, what else would you do with it?